


You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To

by augustmonsoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Stuck in a blizzard, tipsy dancing, unadulterated fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 17:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5879542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustmonsoon/pseuds/augustmonsoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I reckon I got you to myself tonight, English,” Angie says, a mischievous smile twisting her lips, “I don’t reckon the Telephone Company’s gonna be open in this weather.”</p><p>A low, rumbling laugh escapes Peggy, “I’m all yours,’ she concedes, “slave to your every whim.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To

**Author's Note:**

> This is for all of you across the pond, stuck in the snow, I hope this makes up for Love Letters. 
> 
> My eternal thanks (for literally everything) to lovely smoreish, who suffered through many iterations of this before it finally found its voice. Thank also to V for reading and commenting and helping make this better. All mistakes that remain are of course mine alone. 
> 
> I obviously do not own these characters, Season 2 would be far different if I did.

The walls glow orange. It’s real quiet, too quiet, no chatter of the people in the streets, no rumble of the traffic. Peggy starts awake. Her first thought is; _have I slept through some kind of HYDRA disaster?_ Then; _has everyone been vanished with a death ray?_ Her mind races with the possibilities, the different game plans she should implement. She stares at the walls. There’s some sort of odd light filtering through the cheap curtains. _Radioactive? Perhaps_. It wouldn’t be the first time Howard’s inventions ended up in the wrong hands.

Her next thought is; _nightmare, or reality?_ Ever since the war her dreams have been plagued with these disaster scenarios; death destruction, abandonment. The room swims. Her eyes are gummy, tongue too big for her mouth, her neck hurts like hell. Nightmares rarely concern themselves with the perils of falling asleep at your desk. _Reality then._ Reality she knows how to deal with. She squares her shoulders and gets up from the chair, back aching in protest.

She pushes aside the curtains, preparing to assess the damage. She expects desolation, Manhattan laid to waste. Instead, the world is white, and glittering. It’s late afternoon but the streetlamps are already on. Their dim yellow light pools in amber puddles on the white roads. The dirt and grime of the alley in front of The Griffith Hotel has been scrubbed clean, veiled and dressed in bridal tulle. Peggy’s shoulders relax. _Not apocalypse. Snow._

The knock on the door is so faint that at first she barely hears it. It comes again, a little more insistent. Angie back from work.

Peggy opens the door to find Angie, half a step away from freezing to death. She’s bundled up within an inch of her life. The colour has drained from her face, her eyelashes are frosty, and snowflakes are melting off her coat, creating a damp patch on the carpet.

“Good lord, Angie!” Peggy exclaims.

Angie opens her mouth to reply, but her teeth are chattering too much to for the words to be coherent. Peggy ushers her inside, gathering her in her arms.

“You should get changed out of your wet clothes before you catch your death,” Peggy tells her. She grabs one of her nightgowns from the cupboard, “put this on.”

Angie starts with her scarf, unknotting it with some difficulty. When she throws it on the floor it crunches, stiff with ice. The coat comes off next, then a cardigan, then another; Angie peels off each layer one by one, until she is standing in her uniform, now completely sodden, shivering. The wet fabric clings to her body, delineating every curve and plane.

Peggy feels a little choked.

“I’ll, uh, give you some privacy”, she says, feeling herself going red. She walks a few paces and stands with her back to Angie. Suddenly, she no longer knows how to arrange her limbs in space, limbs in space; _how best to affect nonchalance?_ She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them again. _When did the room get so warm?_

Angie coughs slightly, a little quiet embarrassed cough “um, English?”

Peggy turns, Angie is making a face, holding up her hands, red and swollen from the cold.

“Could you give me a hand with the buttons?” Angie’s voice is softer than normal, she’s smiling, just a tiny upturn of her lips, she looks unsure of herself.

Peggy ducks her head, her heart is racing, “of course.”

Angie’s eyes follow Peggy as she bends closer Angie. Peggy finds that she’s unable to look up to meet them. Instead she concentrates on the tiny details of Angie, her impossibly unmarked skin, the exact angle of the hollow at the bottom of her throat.

Fingers like jelly, Peggy undoes the top button, then the next. The damp fabric falls open to reveal the sharp lines of Angie’s collarbones. Another couple of buttons reveals the rise of Angie’s sternum, the barest suggestion of rows of ribs on either side, and the gentle swell of her breasts. Peggy becomes acutely aware of the feel of Angie’s skin when her fingers accidently brush against her. It’s soft and silky smooth, and it sends tiny vibrations of electricity through her fingertips like touching a live wire.

“There,” Peggy tells Angie, undoing the last button, she still can’t quite lift her eyes to catch hers.

“Thanks, doll,” murmurs Angie, her voice husky. Peggy feels the hairs at the nape of her neck to attention.

Angie turns away slightly and wriggles out of her dress, and slides into Peggy’s nightgown. Comfortable, and much warmer in the soft cotton, she gives a little sigh of pleasure that momentarily short circuits Peggy’s brain. _Good Lord, woman,_ Peggy tells herself, _get a grip._

It’s snowing harder now, flecks of white stick to the frosted window pane. Angie presses her nose to the window watching the drifts piling up on the sidewalk. The snow is gathering with such speed that the ground floor windows are becoming at risk of being blocked off. The streets are deserted. There’s not much that can shut down Manhattan, but the weather seems to have pulled it off.

“I reckon I got you to myself tonight, English,” Angie says, a mischievous smile twisting her lips, “I don’t reckon the Telephone Company’s gonna be open in this weather.”

A low, rumbling laugh escapes Peggy, “I’m all yours,’ she concedes, “slave to your every whim.”

“Good,” Angie replies, smiling wide “let’s start with the schnapps.”

*

The war, the SSR, all of it feels so far away sitting on the bed with Angie with their glasses of peach schnapps and lemonade, a game of Chutes and Ladders between them. Sitting cross legged, hair loose, face alight with childlike glee at the board game, Angie looks so lovely that Peggy’s chest aches. She wants to gather Angie up in her arms and promise her that nothing bad will ever happen, that she won’t let it happen, would rather die than see Angie get hurt. She doesn’t know how say these things out loud, so she just smiles fondly, and charts the way the light from the bedside lamp slants across Angie’s body, illuminating her.

 _God_ , she thinks, _how did I ever get so lucky?_ She thinks of all the nights she spent alone in military bunks dreaming of evenings like this. She thinks of the When-the-War-is-Over promises she’d made to herself all those years ago, the list of inane, idle things she would do when the world finally stopped going to hell. In 1945, the war had ended for most, everyone had put aside all that loss, all that heartbreak, and begun to rebuild. But, the war hadn’t really ever stopped for her. The loss, the heartbreak just kept going, and going and going.

The light outside changes as the sun goes down over the city, it’s stopped snowing, purples and oranges bruise the sky in lurid hues. The radio is on, Angie sings along under her breath. _Maybe I am dreaming after all_ , thinks Peggy, _maybe the world has ended, and this is all that’s left. Good_ , she thinks. _Perfect._

An old movie love song starts playing; for Peggy, the low thrum of the jazz trumpet brings back memories of mud and damp fatigues, cramped nights in the buses driving Steve from state to state, from USO show to USO show. This song had followed them right across the country, playing almost nonstop the whole way down the Atlantic Coast, from New York down to Myrtle Beach. Peggy still can taste the salt on her tongue listening to the slide of the strings.

Angie gets a far-away look on her face; she’s sitting up on her knees head swaying to the melody, lost in the music. “I was going to dance to this at my wedding,” She says softly.

Peggy gets a sudden glimpse of the girl Angie used to be. They don’t talk much about before. No one does. Everyone lost someone during the War, especially all the young girls Angie’s age, all those weddings planned and abandoned, all those girls forced to grow up too fast.

 _What was he like?_ Peggy wants to ask, this boy you wanted to marry, the groom at the wedding you planned. She doesn’t, because what use would that be, dredging up lost loves and buried grief? Besides, Peggy can picture him well enough. A boy of seventeen, brown earnest eyes, close cropped golden hair, sweet smile. She’d seen enough of them, they all looked the same, those young boys that they trained up and sent off to get killed. They all had girls back home, girls like Angie who picked out songs to dance to at their weddings.

If Peggy had expected sadness on Angie’s face, there is none. Angie has hopped off the bed and is smoothing down her nightgown; she bobs a deep curtsey with a tipsy flourish. “Miss Carter” she asks, affecting a plummy accent, “would you do me the honour of this dance?”

Peggy swings off the bed and bends into an exaggerated curtsey of her own. “My dear lady,” she says, extending her hand, “the honour is all _mine_.”

Angie takes Peggy’s offered hand and places her own on Peggy’s back, palm flat against the edge of Peggy’s shoulder blades. Peggy rests her free hand on Angie’s shoulder and arches her spine, stretching her neck to curve her upper body outwards.

Angie leads falteringly. _One-two-three, one-two-three_. They are sloppy with drink and both used to being led. In the end, they give up steps altogether and sway in time to the music; Angie’s arms around Peggy’s neck, Peggy’s around Angie’s waist, cheek to cheek, hips moving in sync. Angie sings along with the radio against Peggy’s ear, whispering the lyrics like a secret.

_You’d be paradise to come home to._

A warm feeling unfurls at the pit of Peggy’s belly.   _Definitely a dream,_ she thinks. _I hope I never wake up._

On the radio, Dinah Shore croons out the last note and The Benny Goodman Orchestra strike up _Sing, Sing, Sing_.

Peggy and Angie begin to dance faster with the music, hopping and shimmying, kicking and flicking their ankles, their movements becoming sloppier and more frenetic as the drum beat quickens.

Coming together and dancing apart, skirts flying, shoulders rolling, jittering in time to the trombones they whirl across the room, knocking into furniture, beginning to giggle madly.

As the drum beat builds up to the final crescendo, Peggy twirls Angie, arm flung out. Angie spins back, in tight little revolutions, her curls whipping around her face, skirt ballooning up like a mushroom cup around her knees.

She stumbles on the last step and comes to a shuddering stop barely an inch from Peggy. The room spins. She rests a hand on Peggy’s chest to steady herself.

The cymbals and the drums crash out the last bars.

Suddenly, in the silence, the sound of their breathing is too loud. They look each other, rooted to the spot, eyes bright, chests heaving; their mouths fallen open in little oh’s trying to catch their breath.

The tick of the second hand on the clock on the wall drags.

Angie glances down at her hand, still resting over Peggy’s heart. She can feel Peggy’s heartbeat, wild against her palm. She lets her hand linger, wondering if Peggy will move away. When she doesn’t, she moves her hand up to cradle the base of Peggy’s neck.

She bites down her lip, looking up at Peggy through hooded eyelids, letting her decide.

Peggy can feel the heat of Angie’s palm searing through her dress, she presses closer. Angie’s lashes flutter closed. She tilts her head slightly and reaches up, an arm snaking around Peggy’s waist. Instinctively, Peggy bends to meet her.

Angie tastes of peaches and gin. Her lips are soft, pliable, teasing Peggy’s lips open.

Then Peggy’s natural caution kicks in. She draws back slightly. Angie makes a small mewl of discontent, opening her eyes, her mouth turning into a plaintive pout.

“Ang…are you sure about this? We’ve both had a few drinks,” Peggy says gently.

Angie’s face gets a little hard, she averts her eyes. “You don’t have to spare my feelings, Peg” she says with a brittle lightness, “if you don’t want to, just say.”

“Angie,” Peggy says, turning Angie’s gaze towards her with gentle pressure of her thumb against Angie’s chin. “I want to. More than anything I want to.”

Angie’s expression softens a little, she rolls her eyes, “so? What’s the big hold up?”

“I thought-,” starts Peggy.

Angie cuts Peggy off midsentence. “D’you know the trouble with you, English?” she asks, voice all tender.

Peggy raises her eyebrows inquiringly.

“You think too much,” Angie murmurs, bending her head to trail kisses down the column of Peggy’s neck. One hand tangled in Angie’s hair, her fingers dragging down Angie’s scalp, Peggy arches her back, offering more of her neck to Angie’s lips.

Angie presses kisses along Peggy’s jaw, each press of her lips a spark of bright sensation. She works her way back to Peggy’s mouth, catching Peggy’s bottom lip with barest hint of teeth, teasing, until Peggy presses forward to deepen it into a dizzying kiss.

Locked together, they fumble their way across to the bed. With one arm tight around Angie’s waist, and one arm outstretched for balance, Peggy lowers Angie to the top of the covers, scattering the counters on the Chutes and Ladders board.

*


End file.
